U
by Mediancat
Summary: RosenbUrg? That can't be correct. It's always been Rosenberg . . . right? And if that's changed, what else has?


Author's Note: Old fic of mine I thought lost and was able to track down. Set early season three. All characters etc. owned by Joss Whedon et al.

X X X X X

Thump! Thump! Thump!

Dimly, from the recesses of his brain, Xander Harris heard the knocks, but they brought him only marginally closer to consciousness. Deep within, something was urging him awake, but it wasn't powerful enough yet.

THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!

That was better. Slowly, the fog began to lift. Xander struggled to make a sound.

"Hrrmmmf."

He wasn't quite sure what that meant, but he knew it was important.

Suddenly, to his great surprise, he heard his window opening from the outside and someone's feet plopping onto his floor. He opened his eyes, and what he saw wiped all thoughts of sleep from his brain.

Buffy was standing there, a cheery smile on her face, "Hi, Xander! Would you wake up, already?" She stopped. "You're not taking those sleeping pills again, are you?" She said with mock disapproval. "You KNOW what they do to your metabolism . . ."

"Buffy?" He asked in shock. Something was weird, here. He and Buffy weren't exactly on the best of terms, yet. They hadn't had time to reconcile after that huge blowup between he and Buffy and Willow and Mrs. Summers at the party -- just over a day ago. Buffy and Willow were cool, Buffy and Cordy were cool, and by definition Oz was cool with damn near everything. The human air conditioner, that was wolfboy for you.

But he, he'd said some really nasty, but completely justified things, and Buffy had taken it very personally. The past few days had been hellish. But here Buffy was, in the morning, opening his window and climbing in, chipper, as though nothing had happened.

"See you've got the name recognition thing going," she said sarcastically. "Well, come on! Up, up, up!" Figures she'd gotten back into school and not told him yet --

He blinked. "Don't you think we need to talk?"

"Talk? About what?" Could it have been that she'd forgiven him? Which would be cool, no question, but he wasn't quite sure he'd forgiven her yet. Besides which, she'd been the one that deserted, not like he'd done anything that could have provoked that . . .

She went on, "No, we're cool. I thought we already HAD that discussion, anyway." Reaching for the covers, she dragged them down and said, "Now come ON! Willow and Cordy are waiting outside."

What were they doing here? Never mind, that could wait. He was amazed that the forgiveness could come so easy -- but, what was the old statement about gift horses and mouths? Not that it made much sense -- who'd want to stick their heads down a horse's throat anyway? -- but he think he got the gist. "Okay, Buff, I'm coming." He looked under the covers. "I need clothes."

"Oh, go ahead, Xander. I won't mind." Her voice was mischievous; for just a second Xander's thoughts drifted back to the fantasy-turned-nightmare that had been Valentine's day. But no; here, it was obvious that Buffy was joking. She climbed back down out the window and said, "Five minutes," mock threateningly.

Five minutes later, he was stumbling outside, still not completely awake yet. Buffy was standing in front of "Queen C," and Willow and Cordy were inside. "Get in the car, lateboy," Cordy shouted.

Confused as all hell, Xander let himself be pushed into the car's back seat. Odd that Buff and Will would even let themselves be driven around by Cordy except in a screaming emergency, and getting to school on time basically didn't qualify.

He sat in the back, next to Willow on the ride in. The ride in was smooth, pleasant and comfortable; no cars were sideswiped, no elderly women went diving for the sidewalks, no trashcans went bounding down the street. This was shocking like Electro was shocking. Like power plant main genreators were shocking. Cordelia Chase and good driving were completely opposed concepts.

The car screeched to a stop in front of the main entrance. "Come on, come on, out out out, got to get the good parking spaces!" Willow, Buffy and Xander all spilled out the car and Cordelia expertly zoomed off towards the parking lot. In the process, Willow dropped some papers and Xander scooped them up.

"Here you go, Will --" as he was about to hand them to her he noticed something odd. "You misspelled your last name," he said.

"Oh!" She exclaimed. "I did?" She looked at them. "No I didn't. See? There it is. R-O-S-E-N-B-U-R-G. Rosenburg."

RosenbUrg?

"That's not how you spell your last name. You've always spelled it with an e."

"What ARE you talking about, Xander?" Buffy asked. "You've known Willow your whole life and you don't know how to spell her last name?'

"Of course I do! RosenBERG, with an E."

A look of genuine concern crossed the Slayer's face. "Maybe that crack I made about the sleeping pills wasn't so far off. Are you feeling okay, Xander?" Willow's face had a look to match Buffy's.

"You KNOW how to spell my name, Xander. It's not like you haven't spelled it correctly in the past." She paused, and in that breathless way she had, she said, "Oh! Is this some kind of, you know, joke? Because, um, it really isn't funny. It's just weird."

"No joke, Will." Xander looked around. Some things were definitely NOT right. Nothing he could quite peg, at the moment; just a few things seemed odd. The flagpole, the parking lot . . . some of the designs on the side of the building . . . nothing he typically paid attention to..

Cordelia came up the sidewalk from the direction of the parking lot. Calling out to his girlfriend, he said, "Cordy! How do you spell Willow's last name?"

"I don't. I just call her Willow." Noting the exasperated look on Xander's face, she said, "Okay, okay! Let me think. R -O-S-E-N-B-U-R-G."

Willow and Buffy looked at him with small, satisfied smiles. "See? Willow taunted gently. "Even Cordelia agrees with us."

Okay, this was getting odd. Annoyed, distracted, he snapped, "Yeah, but you gotta remember, this is Cordy we're talking about. She'd have trouble spelling cat if you spotted her the C and the A."

Buffy and Willow exchanged looks, then cut off Cordy's scream of outrage when Buffy said, "Xander, you spell cat with a k."

Xander's neck twisted around fast enough he should have gotten whiplash, his expression a mask of horror. Right then the two of them burst out laughing, and after a second Cordelia joined them. "Geeze, relax, willya? It was a joke, that's all!"

For whatever reason, that tore it. SOMETHING wasn't right here, and it wasn't just the U in Willow's name. "NOT funny, Buff. NOT funny at all. Would someone please tell me what the HELL is going on around here? Has this all been some kind of bizarre practical joke the three of you are playing on me? Because, if it is, it has long since passed the point of being funny, has zoomed past weird and is well on its way to being downright euhhhhhh! So knock it off and let's all continue with our lives the way they belong, okay?"

The smiles left all three faces, replaced instantly by looks of genuine, honest concern. "What do you mean, what's going on? What's your problem here?" It was said by Cordelia, without much malice. "All I see is you acting freaky and Buffy and Willow playing a joke on you. Nothing really out of the normal. Well, except that the joke was funny. That's NOT normal."

Willow said, "Um, what do you think is going on?"

They moved over to the school walkway and huddled around the flagpole. It definitely seemed a little off kilter. Xander took a deep breath and said, "First, there was the deal with Buffy bouncing into my bedroom window this morning like she didn't have a care in the world. Like we hadn't had that huge argument a couple of night ago. Then there's all four of us going to school together like it happened everyday. Then of course, there's Cordelia's surprising driving skill, and finally, this little matter of the WRONG spelling of Willow's name -- which everyone somehow assumes is right. I swear, my entire life, it's been R-O-S-E-N-B-E-R-G. No U. I was so proud when I got to spell your name right. Don't you remember? I practiced for a long time."

Willow got a goofily reminiscent look on her face for a second. "Yeah, I remember, alright." To the other two. "He wouldn't stop. Every five minutes, it was 'Rosenburg: R-O-S-E-N-B-U-R-G. Rosenburg.' My mother eventually had to bribe him with a barbecue to keep him from doing it again."

"Yeah, Will, I remember that," Xander said firmly. "Except there was definitely an E involved. And what about the rest of it?"

Defensively, Cordy snapped, "Well, I've been practicing my driving. So there's no mystery there!"

"One," Buffy said. "And, Xander, THAT fight? Come on. That come between us? Look, if it helps things smooth over, I'm really, really sorry. You're right; what I did, I screwed up bigtime, but I REALLY want to put it behind us, okay?"

Again, he was really surprised Xander had laid a VERY heavy guilt trip on Buffy; he'd been really harsh. Buffy'd deserved it, but still -- never mind. " Okay."

"Two."

"And as for the school thing, Xander," Willow said, "It, um, it WAS a surprise. We just thought it would be cool if you got to go to school with all of us, just like we used to do. Except this time, we added Cordy!"

"Three," Buffy said. "See? No problems at all."

"And this little U/E thing we've got going here?"

"Brainlock!" Cordy piped up. "I mean, your brain stops working on a regular basis; I'd think you'd be used to it by now."

"Oh? You mean like when I started dating you?"

"No, that was MY brainlock, and the luckiest day of YOUR life." Well, SOME things never changed . . .

"ANYWAY," Buffy intervened. "In my book that's four. So are we ready for school or what? I have to go see Giles about some vampy stuff, but nothing that should include you guys. So, later?" She walked off towards the library; more slowly, the other three entered the building.

As they turned down the first hall they passed by Oz. He didn't even look at the trio, and Willow didn't look at him. Jokingly, Xander asked Willow, "Come on, Will, aren't you even going to say hi to your boyfriend. I mean, I know I don't . . ." He broke off at her confused look.

Then the sense of unease that he'd so recently suppressed emerged again when Willow said, "Boyfriend?"

Oh, NO . . . .

No, no, no, something was up here . . .

"Oz isn't my boyfriend. He never has been," Willow began. "I mean, there was that time back in January and February when he asked me out -- but then we found out that he was the werewolf! Um, not his fault -- but I could never go out with a guy that turns that hairy three days a month."

"She learned from Buffy's mistake, I guess," Cordy said as Xander started shaking his head no. "She saw what happens when you date a monster. In the end, they always turn on you."

"See, Xander?" Willow chirped. "That's something YOU taught us." Then she picked up on the return of Xander's weirded-out expression. "What is it?"

He gestured to Cordy and pulled Willow off to one side. "Huh?"

Willow said, "What? He asked me out, you told me not to, I didn't go. He's a werewolf; that means he might kill people. And after Angel -- well, I just couldn't have it on my conscience. I couldn't put all of you through that . . . again. Especially Buffy." She paused. "Oh! Are you worried that I've kept up my little crush on you? It's gone, I swear! I mean, I was a LITTLE upset when you chose Cordy -- but that's long gone! Promise!" Another little hesitation. "Maybe Buffy was right." She reached up to feel his head. "No, no fever . . ."

Cordelia walked up then. "Trying to find brains in there? I think if you listen REALLY closely, you can hear them --" She stopped when she saw Xander's facial expression. "Okay, now this is REALLY weirding me out."

Xander slowly started backing away from this Willow, who wasn't quite his Willow, and this Cordelia who wasn't quite his Cordelia. "Xander?" They both asked. "What's wrong?"

"Everything!" He backed up, spun around and crashed into Larry, who was bopping down the hall with one of his football teammates. "Hey, WATCH it," Neanderthal-boy growled. Then a flash of recognition entered his eyes and Xander thought he saw . . . fear? "Sorry, Harris," Larry said, shying away. "Didn't know it was you." He and the other jock hurried off. Briefly Xander wondered if this version of Larry was gay -- or if he was, if he realized it.

He stepped backwards a couple of more times. What else had changed? Frantically, he spun his head around. Hadn't Mrs. Crandall retired? Since when did Harmony's hair have silver streaks in it? Was the floor always THAT particular color?

What else had changed?

Will and Cordy were looking at him like he was a favorite pet suddenly gone crazy. He couldn't taske this. The knowledge in their eyes, the pity, the scorn -- he couldn't take it anymore. It was getting to him. Like they knew what he'd done.

What he'd done? The world was going bonkers, people weren't being themselves, and any second now he expected Rod Serling to poke his head out from a locker.

"Xander Harris: A man, burdened by a guilt he dare not express, inexplicably finds himself somewhere where there is no need for him to feel guilty. A place where none of the things he has done wrong . . . will come back to haunt him. A place called . . . the Twilight Zone."

His subconscious, he had to admit, did a pretty damn good Rod Serling imitation.

With all of this, he was worried that they knew what he'd done?

He turned and ran down the hall, ignoring Will and Cordy's calls from behind him. All of it was just too much. A turn down one hallway --

my god, was that Principal FLUTIE? --

a dash down another, sending students and teachers scattering out of his way. Not really looking where he was going, he just knew he HAD to get away from --

from what?

He was running away from the universe. Kinda hard to do, since the universe was EVERYWHERE. He slowed down and came to a stop directly in front of the library. Looking in, he saw an outwardly unchanged Buffy talking with an outwardly unchanged Giles. With any luck, that would mean a Giles that could help him out, too.

He burst in and said, "Houston, we HAVE a problem."

With that exasperated look he'd come to know and love, Giles said, "Mr. Harris, can this wait? Buffy and I were discussing something of some importance --"

"I got your important thing trumped big time, G-man," Xander snapped back. "I don't belong here."

"Precisely what I was saying," Giles said.

"No, no, that's not it at all. Things are wrong, little things. Willow's last name is spelled with a U, not an E, PLUS she's not dating Oz. Larry's afraid of me. Cordy's a good driver -- " hearing Willow and Cordy run up behind him, a little out of breath, he interjected, "and I don't care HOW much you've been practicing, no way you could get that good that fast. I just saw Principal Flutie out there in the hallway --"

Buffy blinked in confusion. "So?"

"Buffy, he was eaten." Before the Slayer could obejct Xander plowed forward with, "Don't bother. I know you're going to tell me that it didn't happen that way. Then why do I think it did? Why do I KNOW it did?"

"He's been like this all morning, Giles," Buffy explained.

"Mr. Harris," Giles said sternly, "You swear that you're telling the truth, here?"

"Lyin', dyin', G-man." Giles looked confused.

As he was about to explain it, he heard a VERY familiar voice behind him say, "What he means, wise Mr. Giles sir, is that he swears he's telling the truth." Xander spun around and saw . . .

Jesse.

Jesse, who he had had to kill.

"What's the matter, man?" Jesse said as he walked towards them. "You look like you've just seen a ghost."

Jesse repeated the question. "What's wrong with you, Xander m'man? Pressures of living on the Hellmouth finally snap your brain? Or has dating the old love of my life finally sent you around the bend?"

Jesse . . . . he almost never thought of his old friend. After that incident in the Bronze -- which had left Jesse's grieving parents without even a body to bury -- he'd indulged in acts of repression that would have made Giles proud. If he didn't think about it, it didn't happen. So he he didn't think about it . . . and it was like he hadn't existed.

He HADN'T lost track of his friend in the graveyard. Hadn't let him go off with Darla. Hadn't staked him. Hadn't. Hadn't. Hadn't.

To be faced with a living, breathing, reminder of one of his greatest failures . . . was almost too much. Jesse stood there, looking as good as he ever had. By now Xander had stood there speechless long enough for his expression of concern to match everyone else's.

But, as if he'd needed any more proof that things weren't right --

Just when he'd thought this universe couldn't get any crazier . . . he didn't know what was going to happen next. Was Buffy living here with her father? Was Jesse dating Buffy? Was Jenny Calendar still alive?

What else . . HADN'T happened?

What about --

His train of thought was cut off when Giles said, not unkindly, "Xander?"

Xander shook his head. "Sorry. Just -- that's it. Jesse, man -- you're dead. Just like Flutie's dead -- well, not JUST like, he was eaten by hyena spirits, you became a vampire and I had to kill you. You're NOT alive anymore."

He looked confused. Buffy tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Xander's wigging. We'll fill you in later."

"I am NOT wigging, Buffy. This ISN'T my universe."

Jesse said, "So, you're saying it's a 'Mirror, Mirror' or Sliders kind of thing? Alternate universes? Xander, m'man, seems like you've been overdosing on the Sci-Fi channel recently --"

Giles motioned for Jesse to be quiet. "So, alternate universes, eh?" he said.

"YES! What is wrong with you people? I've already told you this!" he practically exploded.

Willow piped up, "Well, look at it from our point of view, Xander. All of a sudden you start acting like familiar things -- are, well, not familiar."

"Yeah," Cordelia chimed in. "You're the one who looks like he's gone all Looney Tunes."

"As usual, Cordelia, you have an absolute mastery of the art of tact," Giles muttered. "While the natural first inclination might be to assume that Mr. Harris has, perhaps, been affected by some spell, bear in mind that this is the Hellmouth --"

"Thank you, oh kind Mr. Giles sir. For a second I had forgotten." Jesse interrupted.

Giles glared at Jesse for a second before continuing, voice slightly raised. "so it may be possible that this is not the Xander Harris we have all come to know and love. There are instances of people going from one world to another. Back in the early part of this century, a duplicate of author Ambrose Bierce appeared near him in the desert in Mexico, SWEARING he was the genuine article. And more recently --" He broke off as he noticed four sets of eyes staring at him in confusion, and Xander listening intently. "Well. That should be all the proof I need right there that this is not our Alexander Harris. He's the only one of you not bored by my explanation."

"No offense, G-Man," Xander said. "Any other time I would be thrilled down to my toes to stand here and be bored senseless, but, what's the word I'm looking for, oh yeah, THIS IS MY LIFE WE'RE TALKING ABOUT!" People seemed startled, again, by his outburst. Good. "So," he said a bit more calmly. "Now we know the problem. What's the solution?"

"HOLD it," Buffy said. "I still don't believe this, I'm sorry. Willow and Cordelia are right." She paused. "Wow, Cordy's right. There's something I never thought I'd hear myself say."

"Thanks!" Cordy said. Then: "Hey! . . ."

"I still vote sci-fi overdose," Jesse tossed in.

"A possibility, indeed, Buffy," Giles said. "Still, one must examine all angles. One more time, Xander. Detail when this began -- and every change you've noticed, no matter how trivial."

So Xander went through the litany again, from Willow's name through Cordy's driving, all the way to Jesse still being alive. Jesse, who was a long way from being his Jesse, just stood there in shock and said, "You let a vampire take me? Wow. How could you?"

Giles interrupted: "Let's see: In this world, you kept better track of Jesse, so the vampires could not drag him away and convert him. In this world, you did not fall victim to the hyena spirits' curse -- and, with your help, Principal Flutie did not die. In this world, Willow agreed with you -- as did we all -- about the general repulsiveness of dating a werewolf, and so Willow remains,um, sans boyfriend. I'm not too sure about the other changes --"

Willow quickly explained about the namespelling problem Xander ahd had when he was a little kid.

"Ah. Thus the pattern: All of the changes center around you. I'm still not sure of the connection, though."

Xander knew. Oh, god, he knew. Quietly, he turned to Cordelia and asked, "Cordy. What happened between us on Valentine's Day?"

She blushed. "Do you really want to say that in public?"

"No. When we broke up at the Bronze?"

"We DIDN'T break up," Cordelia said. "I mean, Harmony and her flock tried to pressure me into it, but after you gave me that necklace . . . I just couldn't . . ."

Just as he'd thought. No breakup, no misfiring love spell, no Buffy-Rat, no embarrassing the hell out of Willow. Something else . . .

he HADN'T done wrong.

Hadn't.

Xander explained the relevance quickly. Willow said, "Then Giles is right! It all centers around you!"

Buffy said, "That's it, Xandman! It's all you."

Indeed. If so . . . one more thing he needed to check. He took a deep breath and looked at the Slayer.

"Buffy," he began. "What happened to . . ."

He couldn't.

He HAD to.

"What happened to Angel?"

"What happened to Angel, when?" Buffy asked confusedly.

"When he tried to summon Acathla."

Emotions washed over her face -- most of them unpleasant. Xander hated having to do this to Buffy -- any Buffy. But there was no real choice.

"I had to kill him. Standing before Acathla the way he was -- I had no choice. It was hard, but -- there was nothing else I could have done." Everyone else stood around and watched, and Xander was somehow reminded of his time on stage at the talent show.

"And that's why you ran away for the summer?"

"Ran away? No. You found me there, half an hour later, still crying. But I couldn't have run away. I had too many responsibilities for that." She smiled humorlessly. "Besides, there was no way that my Angel was ever coming back."

"What about that ritual to restore his soul?"

"It didn't work. You know that. That's when Drusilla attacked." He HATED remembering that attack. He'd failed, again. Willow had been badly hurt; Kendra had been killed.

His center stage feeling was intensifying. He could hear Buffy's voice from just five minutes earlier saying "It all centers on you." It wasn't a feeling he especially enjoyed.

Nevertheless, this was a scene he had to play out to the end. "The second time. When Willow was in the hospital?"

"There never was a second time. Willow didn't wake up until it was all over. I still thank God it was only a simple concussion and not something worse."

Two vampires with one stake -- Willow not in serious danger, and -- he'd never been put in the position of having to lie to Buffy.

So no guilt. No guilt for Willow's coma, no guilt from having told her he loved her --

No guilt for the lie. He'd feared and prayed that Willow's spell hadn't worked in time. That when the spell had worked the conjured soul had had nowhere to go but up. That Buffy had killed the evil murdering bastard Angelus -- not deadboy.

But he couldn't deny it any longer. She wouldn't have run away had it been anyone but the one, true Angel.

Buffy asked, "Xander? Why'd you want to know?"

And he wasn't ready to tell her yet. Even this alternate version of buffy, he couldn't tell.

This was a camel's backbreaker. Xander screamed incoherently and fled the library. Dimly, he heard the voices of his not quite friends calling to him, but he couldn't face them. Faster and faster he ran. Past the silver-streaked Harmony. Past an Amy with red hair. Past Flutie, past Oz. Out the school building --

into DARKNESS?

This couldn't be real.

Day didn't suddenly become night -- well, except in dreams. He stopped running and slapped himself on the head. Of COURSE! This was all a dream.

He pinched himself.

Nope, that didn't work . . . he pinched harder. That would leave a nasty bruise when he woke up.

"C'mon," he muttered to himself. "Wake up, wake up . . ." with every pinch. Then he closed his eyes and reopened them. Nothing.

Okay. Okay. He wasn't doing this right. He took a few deep breaths and closed his eyes. Then he pinched himself as hard as he could, full hand on the arm, and slowly opened his eyes.

He wasn't in his bedroom . . . but it wasn't night outside the school, either. And he'd never been a sleepwalker.

Of course, that's because you couldn't walk to get where he was. All around him stood pictures of his other life. Not flat, like a TV screen; more like a holodeck. THERE he was, convincing Willow about Oz. And over there, kissing Cordelia passionately, and over there, grabbing Jesse by an arm and dragging him along after Buffy'd jumped Darla and the other vampire, and over there, finding a sobbing Buffy in that mansion Spike had been hiding out in.

A voice cut in from the darkness. An oddly familiar voice, though one he couldn't quite place at the moment. "Well? What do you think?"

"I don't understand. What's going on here? Who are you?"

"It's your wish come true, Xander," the voice answered. "And me? I'm a friend."

"I don't call anyone my friend who tortures me like this," Xander yelled back.

The sound of clomping footsteps indicated someone slowly approaching. As a dimly lit figure approached, he said, "I never said I was YOUR friend . . ."

Xander stiffened as he recognized the approaching face. "Well, I was certainly never yours -- deadboy."

"You don't remember me, do you?" Angel said.

Xander was puzzled, and said so. "Huh? Of course I do, Angel." Xander regained some of his mental balance.

With an air of great weariness, mixed with amusement, Angel answered, "No, you don't remember. I'm not who you think I am."

"With the way this . . . day . . . has been going, I'm not surprised," Xander said cynically. "Who are you then? A figment of my imagination? Another layer of my dreamlife? -- which I'd never thought was as odd as Buffy's, but obviously I was wrong -- no. I say if it looks like a deadboy and talks like a deadboy, odds are it's the same GODDAMNED vampire who's been torturing me ever since Buffy got into town." As Xander walked up to the vampire, the pictures of his alternate life began flickering and fading out, one by one.

Finally, it was just he and Angel facing off, in otherwise utter darkness.

"I look like who you want me to look like," Angel said. "You really don't remember?"

"No."

"First thing you have to remember is that we live on a Hellmouth," the vampire began.

"Gee, thanks. For a second I forgot."

As if he hadn't heard Xander's sarcasm, Angel went on. "And all Hellmouths react to strong outside influences. Remember the little boy who made all of your nightmares come true -- and how Marci Ross used the fact that everyone ignored her to turn invisible?"

"Yes . . ." Xander answered, unsure of where exactly this was going.

"In the first case, it was the little boy's fear that caused all the problems, and in the second, it was Marci's powerful desire for revenge."

"So . . ."

"Giles was right. You ARE dense."Angel slowly began walking around Xander. "So . . . the Hellmouth responds to strong emotions, like fear, or revenge . . ."

It hit Xander. "Or guilt."

"Right on the second try. Not bad."

"So, wait, wait. You're saying this alternate universe I was tossed into was a physical maniwhatsis of my guilt? Or that it wasn't real at all?"

"A little bit of both, actually."

"Why now? And why me?" A brief hesitation. "And most importantly, why YOU?"

"Think about it, Xander," Angel said. "What do you think of me?"

"I've already said that, Deadboy. I HATE you." He blinked. He thought he could see the world, dimly, through the fog. Just shapes, though, and motions, nothing more.

"Exactly. You see me as Angel because you've always thought that Angel was your worst enemy. And this little guilt trip you've been going bothers you SO badly that obviously only your worst enemy would do it to you, right?"

"Right!" And GOD, he'd hated that universe. Everything so perfect, so right for him -- could only be wrong. By pure logic, it was so much better, not just for him, but for Will, and Jesse, and Buffy, and Principal Flutie --

But it wasn't HIS world. He wasn't perfect; he wasn't even close to it. And he didn't deserve to be in a world that was.

The vampire answered, "Right. But wrong, in a way. Remember, this all stems from a reflection of your own fear, your own anguish -- your own guilt." He moved around to face Xander, no more than a foot away.

The shapes were becoming clearer behind Angel. It looked like the inside of a bathroom somewhere. He'd been in class? Was that it?

"I've felt guilty for a long time, though. For Jesse, for Buffy, even for Flutie -- even though, may I remind you, I did NOT actually eat him --"

"True. But last night? When you screamed at Buffy so loudly, so long, so nastily, trying to cover up your own fear and guilt -- that's what brought this all on. That was -- the camel's backbreaker." Deadboy seemed amused. "That's what gave me my form, and power." Yes! An early pop quiz, he'd had to go to the bathroom --

The room was a lot lighter, and he could see stalls, now. But Angel was still standing in front of him.

"I know what you're thinking," the vampire said. "But this isn't going to end until you realize something. Until -- you -- understand -- that Angel, as "Deadboy" or as "Angelus the evil murdering bloodsucker" had nothing to do with this. Until you realize that the Hellmouth wouldn't have done this without a cause."

Almost, the world was in color now. Xander was staring directly at the restroom wall now. No! He was looking in --

The face in front of him kept speaking. "Until you realize that your worst enemy --"

in a mirror . . .

"-- is YOU."

And with that the reflection became just a reflection, and the restroom became just the men's room at Sunnydale. Xander shook his head once, twice -- and the reflection did exactly the same.

Now he remembered. It wasn't that he hadn't been prepared for the pop quiz. He was NEVER prepared for pop quizzes, and they almost never sent him running from the room.

He didn't know at the time what had, really. All he knew, was that he felt an overwhelming urge to GET OUT. To run to the bathroom and look in the mirror. Anywhere else he went . . . the guilt had overpowered him.

And then he'd looked in the mirror -- and seen his own face, twisted in pain, staring back at him.

"That's right," it had said. "I'm you. Actually, Xander m'man, I'm your guilt, your self-loathing, personified. Ain't the Hellmouth a wonderful thing?"

Xander had gotten jaded from living in Sunnydale; instead of screaming or shuddering in horror, he'd simply asked "What guilt? What self- loathing? I've looked at myself recently, and I must say I'm a pretty likeable guy."

"To quote your girlfriend," the reflection had answered, "Please! And you tell Giles HE'S repressed. I'm so much a part of you -- here, let me show you . . ."

And that's when the room had faded around him, and the vision had begun, of his life in the other universe. For just a second the room had gone black . . . and then he'd been "awakened" by the unreal Buffy, not remembering anything . . . until now.

Xander checked his watch. He'd only been in the bathroom for five minutes, no matter how long it felt. This "physical manifestation" of his guilt had had some unusual powers.

His guilt. God, his guilt. His reflection had been so right, about repression. But what was he supposed to do? Who could he talk to to relieve his guilt?

Cordy -- she'd be hurt so badly if he revealed his true motives behind forcing Amy into the love spell. So would Willow and Buffy, if he mentioned his lie last spring, before Buffy vanished. And with Willow, by extension, came Oz -- and although he liked the werewolf a little more, he still wasn't entirely comfortable with him. Giles would look out for Buffy first and foremost. So that left no one.

And with Jesse, and Flutie, and the rest -- there was nothing he could do anyway, no matter how much it ate at him. Talking about it -- might relieve his guilt about repressing, but that's it.

So what could he do? Repressing brought even more guilt -- but wouldn't confessing bring more pain to his friends?

No easy answers. None at all.

Xander sighed and looked in the mirror one last time. There were no hints of the guilt there -- it was just a reflection.

Confession, or more repression?

That he was sparing them pain -- that was good. He knew that was good. And if he kept telling that to himself, he might believe it.

Six minutes, now. They knew his tricks, so he had to get back to class. Slowly, he opened the men's room door and began walking down the hall, still thinking.

What could he do to stop the manifestation from appearing again?

How do you stop your worst enemy -- when that worst enemy is you?


End file.
